We are so excited that our son is getting married to this beautiful girl!!

This weekend, we celebrated with an engagement party!

Despite the wind, all went well and fun was had by all!!!

The invitation turned out so cute and the boys made their "famous" BBQ sauce to give as gifts!

We had pulled pork and all the fixin’s as well as assorted drinks.

We decorated with lights, lanterns, pictures of them as kids and signs.

We had a great turnout of family and friends!

We love her family!

SAVE THE DATE!

Ordered these paper whites from Ballards...the box had a chip so they sent me a new one and didn't want this one returned!! So my daughter got one too!!!

Found these white "awesome" pillows at TJ Maxx and they make me feel all calm and peaceful when I look at them...seriously they do!

I love this wood lantern.....love it! I mean LOVE LOVE it!!! Loving these bright green balls too!

Here it is next to my white chairs....try not to notice the "black" cat hair...ugh!

I love little birds and their houses.....

I love burlap...found this on a girls trip to Grapevine and bought all they had! My tree skirt is burlap too!

Same stockings, I just painted the letters white and distressed them...

Our antique bar...very simple this year.

Won this great green container at our annual neighborhood Chinese Christmas....perfect color!

And now….seriously don’t know why I bought this!

Hmmm...still can't decide. Bought this at a neighborhood party, still not sure I like it. You can take it apart and it becomes 4 little trees. Just couldn't find anywhere to put it.

Have a great week and a wonderful Christmas!!!!!!

Love ya!!

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am. I am blessed! Truly blessed to have family and friends that love me. Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and just as many blessings!

Pottery Barn

Have you all drooled over this Noel at my favorite store? Head over to Frugal Flourish and she has a DIY to make the same sign for next to nothing!

Thanks Britt for sending me the link!

How adorable is this mantle? The DIY for these glitter trees can be found at eighteen 25 as well as the banner and the free download for the subway print!

I have already downloaded the print!

I have been decorating all day and I am sooo tired. So off to bed I go but definitely headed to the craft store early in the morning!!!!

So now I must share a couple of awesome, money-saving ideas with you! My hubby when not at the office lives in t-shirts. He has tons of them and I like things to look crisp and ironed but HATE to iron and won’t iron a t-shirt. I have for years used….without using the actual product name (goodness, don’t want to get in trouble!) a great product that you spray on called [name brand goes here] Wrinkle Releaser. We have looked and looked and no one here carries it anymore. I went online and found it but it is so expensive. Like $10 a bottle. Sooooooo…..yes…I MADE MY OWN!!!!!  It is wonderful…better that the real deal. So here is the recipe.  I know you thought I had NO facial wrinkles….I wish!

Spray bottle (33 oz or so) Use less softener for smaller bottle

1/4 cup fabric softener (I used Snuggle exhilarations blue iris and bamboo silk, and no I don’t think they would get upset… considering)

Warm water

That’s it! Put aprox. 1/4 cup in bottle & fill with warm tap water, shake it up! AMAZING!!!

I take the t-shirts out of the dryer, hang, spray, pull. They look so good. I also use it on my shirts. Plus, it is wonderful to give your house a fresh, clean scent. We have our house for sale and I spray it in the closets (actually on the clothes), on the bath rugs & bedspreads before showing. It smells clean and who wants to go into someones closet and smell sweaty tennis shoes??? So, there is my hint and it is so cheap!

Next hint: WD-40 for stainless steel. Yes!!! It makes stainless steel refrigerators, sinks, etc beautiful! Seriously, WD-40!!!! Just spray and rub with a cloth. If you are nervous just spray on a soft cloth and apply. It’s scary but go ahead…try it!

So you all knew this already, RIGHT? I am just slow?????

Gigi

I have been busy helping people decorate. No I don’t get paid! LOL My daughter and I flew….by flew I mean drove.. to a friend’s house in Plano and did a speed decorating job. When we got there we were so shocked to find that she had nothing. When I say nothing, that is exactly what I mean. Her and her new husband bought a aprox 5000 sq ft house and it was (still is) basically empty except for a new table in breakfast area, furniture (from his bachelor pad) in the family room, and furniture in 3 of the 5 bedrooms. Now that means…no pictures, no decorator items…NADA. So on a strict budget we attempted to decorate the kitchen, family room and entry. This means her formal dining, living, and office remain empty. We shopped all day Saturday and decorated, moved furniture, etc until the wee hours of the night and left at 10am Sunday morning. Yes, I have pictures but seriously….they just don’t do it justice. She needs lots and lots more but it was a start. It looks good and I am patting us on the back…but it still needs lots more done.

My friends beautiful home

A couple of weeks ago I helped my son’s girlfriend decorate their house. We changed it from a bachelor pad to a home. It is looking good. Then this past week, I helped my 81-year-old mother-in-law re-decorate her retirement village cottage. Now wrapping my head around the wants of an 81-year-old was difficult. I have definite ideas about decorating so it has been a challenge to make her happy. I have used the saying, “less is more” enough that I think she finally either gets it or just gave in!!! She was so sweet and really listened and let me pick out her new couch and chair. Then she let me take tons of her collectibles and put them away!!! I finished this afternoon with my sweet husbands help!

Now, my daughter is having her entire house dug up! Well, the plumbing is bad and they are literally jack hammering the floors and putting in all new underground pipe! So it will be a while but she is getting new tile, counter-tops, back-splash and possibly new bathroom tile etc. I am sure this means trim work and paint also. So I am guessing we will be busy in a few weeks getting them back to normal. They stayed with us for about a week but now are in one of those hotels made for long stays. I am hoping everything gets done fast, 2 babies in a hotel will get old soon!

We haven’t had a vacation yet…. well that is a lie. We went to the lake and then to the Jimmy Buffett concert in May and then back to the lake for a weekend. Hoping for a relaxing stay in Corpus in a few weeks. My husband has a pinched nerve or slipped disk so the MRI will tell us whether we get to go or stay and have surgery!

Random craziness from tailgating at the Buffett concert...no we don't know them!

Anyway.. I am finished rambling on and on. However, I would like to ask for prayers for my best-friend who is battling cancer. She goes in for a procedure tomorrow to biopsy 2 possible malignancies. They will do it while she is in a cat scan, it is a very specialized procedure. I just pray that it is benign and for her total and complete recovery. We love you PK!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a wonderful garden center (well actually two, I think one is owned by the mother and the other by the daughter). I love to go and look at all their pots and how they plant and design each one. This season they have these wonderful iron planters that are rusty with chippy paint and this wonderful moss is drooping out holding beautiful plants!! Well, I have some iron planters…not as cool as theirs…but I had to have this moss. So Anna, the owner of Little Red Riding Hood Nursery gave me the scoop on how to do it!!! The moss is called sphagnum moss and it actually can hold up to 20 times its dry weight in water. It is amazing. I wish I had pictures from her stores, their planters have been watered so much that the moss droops out and has changed colors!!

If you are interested in making some planters be sure and buy LONG FIBER SPHAGNUM MOSS at your local garden center or online. It takes quite a bit depending on what you are making. I bought the 2 cubic bale and went back and bought a small package, I filled 1 large long planter and 3 round planters.

Here we go…..

1.  Soak your moss for about an hour in a large container. I put mine in a trash can and filled it with water to the top. It says to wear gloves when working with the moss..oops I didn’t!

2.  While it was soaking, I lined the bottom of my iron planter with chicken wire. You can use screen mesh or anything like that.

3.  Next, put on your gloves and grab a handful of moss, squeeze all the water out of it and start packing it on the bottom of your planter. Continue doing this by handfuls going up the sides. I did it fairly thick on the bottom. Be sure and go all the way up the sides, even over the top some. I didn’t do this the first time and had to try to add more after adding soil.

See…I should have gone all the way up past the top!

4.  Now once it is packed, add your potting soil and begin placing your plants!!!!!! I didn’t really believe it would work!! I thought when I put the soil and plants inside and watered everything would fall out the bottom. But no!!! It held and after watering just a dribble of water fell to the ground!!!!

That’s it!! How easy!!!

I am sure I am the only one that is new to the moss thing but it was sooo much fun!!!!!!

Happy gardening!!!!

Gigi

So today was an interesting day. I woke somehow feeling stressy and pressed for time.  I don’t have a full-time job, my kids are grown and happy, my husband is wonderful yet I felt sorry somehow for myself.  Aww..poor me. So I ran to Wally World and after checking out noticed that the nail salon wasn’t busy so I really needed a pedicure and I thought it would make me feel better. Heck, I deserved it!!!

So I climb up in the chair and the lady doing my well deserved pedi turns on the massage thingy and I put my feet in the bubbly warm water and lean back. The nice lady starts to work and I feel the stress leaving my body. We begin to visit and I ask her a few questions and then somehow she begins to tell me the story of her life. At first I had a hard time understanding her English and would have to stop her and ask her to repeat what she said. Then I became so interested and touched I clung to every word.

She told me of her and her husbands escape from Vietnam with 8 (yes I said 8!) small children. How the communist took over and lied to the people, how her husband had been forced to work in the mines with little food and beatings for months on end. How they took her parents home and her mother was so upset she died of a massive heart attack. How her sisters daughters were raped by the  government soldiers.  About their decision to run.

Then she tells me of coming to American with 8 hungry children, 4 were his and 4 were hers and his. She tells a touching story of how they made it to Houston. They could speak very little English and were starving to death and had to find work.  How they somehow met a wonderful lady named Eva and she gave her a job cleaning her home and then they helped her husband get a job mowing lawns. This wonderful woman helped her find other houses to clean and then encouraged her to learn to do nails. That is what she did…for 15 years…from 7 am-9 pm everyday but Sunday. She cleaned all day and did nails at night. The children….well the oldest took care of the youngest. They survived and were so happy and blessed. She said this like 10 times….they were so blessed. You see this Eva lady, she took them to church. She taught them about God. She had a sports car and would take 2 children at a time and buy them shoes. Then one day, she traded her car in for a van so she could pick up the children and buy them all clothes and shoes.  Every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter she brought them all food and at Christmas gave them all presents.  She even sent her and her husband on a vacation for a week, kept the children and took them to Sea World!

I commented that she was an angel. She again told me how blessed she was, how lucky they were to have made it to America. I felt about an inch tall. I asked about her family now. She explains that her husband left and went back to Vietnam. She moved to Lubbock several years ago with her son while he went to school. You see….ALL of her children are college graduates. One of her sons is a doctor and works in the ER here. Her other son is in his last year of residency at UMC. Her daughter got her degree and moved back to Houston and married. Her youngest just graduated. Amazing! Then she tells me that the woman Eva was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago.  Before she died, her and her 4 children all saved and put their money together, drove to Houston and gave her and her husband a trip to Hawaii. Eva took pictures from a helicopter flight and sent them all pictures. She passed away 6 months ago. Tears were pouring down my face, not as much from this sweet woman passing (because she is definitely in heaven) but from being humbled.  So humbled.  As she scrubs my feet, she tells ME how much she appreciates ME and how wonderful and easy her life is now.

God put this sweet, hard-working Vietnamese woman in my path today. She is blessed. She blessed me.

I had the privilege of keeping my 2 healthy, precious grand babies tonight. We all went to bed with full stomachs, snuggled safely in our warm beds in a beautiful home. I am blessed. I am truly blessed and I know it.  My prayers will be different tonight……

It is very nice to know that others feel the way I do!

Reading these just made me feel better, hope they do you too!!!!